Major food safety changes called for in report

April 30, 2008
-
by Keith Nunes

Share This:

WASHINGTON — Trust for America’s Health (T.F.A.H.), an arm of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, has issued a report "Fixing food safety: Protecting America’s food from farm-to-fork" that identifies gaps in the U.S. food safety system, including out-of-date laws, misallocation of resources and inconsistencies among food safety agencies.

"Our goal should be reducing the number of Americans who get sick from food-borne illness," said Dr. Jeff Levi, executive director of the T.F.A.H. "We need to bring food safety into the 21st century. We have the technology. We’re way past due for a smart, strategic upgrade."

Food safety problems identified in the report include the use of government resources for carcass-by-carcass inspection in the meat and poultry industry; a lack of resources for addressing modern pathogens, such as Salmonella and E. coli; staffing shortages at the Food and Drug Administration; and a fragmented food safety regulatory structure within the U.S. government; and limited inspection of imported foods.

Recommendations made by the group focus on repealing federal end-product and processing plant inspection mandates and shifting inspection practices to prevention; the creation of uniform performance standards that are enforceable through product detention, recall authority and civil penalties; improvement in the monitoring of foreign imports; and strengthening the F.D.A. with increased funding, aligning resources with high risk threats and having the long-term goal of realigning all federal food safety functions.

Comment on this Article

The views expressed in the comments section of Food Business News do not reflect those of Food Business News or its parent company, Sosland Publishing Co., Kansas City, Mo. Concern regarding a specific comment may be registered with the Editor by clicking the Report Abuse link.
Enter code as it is shown (required):